About

Sonic Characters Walking Into Stores refers to a series of Sonic the Hedgehog fan art and photoshops depicting characters from the franchise walking into and out of various stores. The original piece of art, showing Shadow the Hedgehog walking into Claire's, was posted to Twitter in April 2022 and inspired multiple variants over the following days on Twitter and Tumblr.

Origin

On April 29th, 2022, Twitter^[1] artist @Amasc0met posted a piece of fan art showing Shadow walking into a Claire's, writing, "Shadow the hedgehog walking into claire’s," gaining over 124,000 likes and 20,000 retweets in four days (shown below, left). The next day, the same artist posted a follow-up piece to Twitter^[2] showing Shadow walking out of Claire's, writing, "Update: shadow the hedgehog has emerged from the claire’s," gaining over 144,000 likes and 23,000 retweets in three days (shown below, right).

Spread

The artwork inspired multiple variants over the following days depicting other Sonic characters walking into and out of various stores. For example, on April 30th, 2022, Twitter^[3][4] artist @CherriFireLive posted artwork showing Sonic walking into Hot Topic, gaining over 81,000 likes in three days (shown below, left). That same day, the artist posted a drawing of Sonic walking out of Hot Topic, gaining over 64,000 likes in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On May 1st, Twitter^[5] artist chunkyspacetime posted a piece of art showing Knuckles walking into Build-A-Bear, gaining over 31,000 likes in two days (shown below).

Also on May 1st, Twitter^[6] artist @isa_for_you posted a piece of fan art showing Sonic, Knuckles and Tails walking into Baskin Robbins, gaining over 23,000 likes and 3,800 retweets in two days (shown below, left). That same day, Twitter^[7] artist @CryoGX posted a piece of art showing E-123 Omega going into GameStop, gaining over 28,000 likes and 4,200 retweets in two days (shown below, right).

On May 2nd, 2022, FanByte^[8] published an article about the trend where they interviewed the original artist who started it. The trend also spread to Tumblr. For example, on May 2nd, Tumblr^[9] user spiritsonic posted fan art showing Silver walking into and out of Lush, gaining over 3,100 notes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

The trend also inspired fan art where characters from other franchises and fandoms walk into stores. For example, on May 3rd, Twitter^[10] user @minadoodles posted a piece of artwork showing Fluttershy walking into Hot Topic, gaining over 10,600 likes and 1,500 retweets in a day (shown below, left). The user also posted an image of Fluttershy leaving Hot Topic to Twitter,^[11] gaining over 3,800 likes in the same span of time (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References